“Carousel” unspools like this: Carousel sends a roll of slide film out to
invited artists who work in a variety of media, but not slideshows. They in
turn make their first slideshow – of their own design. No rules regarding
quantity of slides (or of projectors, or of screens) or regarding
accompanying sound. The slideshows are debuted in live performance the night
of the show.

Past multimedia extravaganzas have featured “audience chant-a-longs; slides
advancing at high speed so as to achieve animation; acting performances;
overlapping imagery; slides projected side-by-side; confessionals (something
along the lines of a catalogue of former boyfriends); one banjo; and
something bordering on witchcraft.” [excerpted from attached Press Release.]

Organized, in part, as a tribute to this mechanism the slide projector,
which is now no longer manufactured, but also as testimony to its ongoing
potential and possibility. While PowerPoint is widespread – even uncorked in
a popular series of local barroom events – 35mm slide projectors offer a
singular combination of artistry and of the homespun, of the evanescently
beautiful and of the reliably mechanical. As the Carousel artists testify,
reports of the slide projector’s death is premature.

And Woodland Pattern’s gallery space is a perfect venue to unfurl these
creations. A most intimate setting for this unique relationship between
advancing image and rapt audience. It is also the best venue to enjoy the
comforting purr and clunky click of the slide projector in action. (At last
weekend’s Edible Book Art show, Woodland Pattern offered pages to eat; on
April 24th it will eschew the digital.)